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There is continued confusion and controversy about the importance of perception versus actual exchange of social support, that I argue in this paper leads erroneously to the conclusion that it is perception that is key. This paper argues that this confusion follows from the lack of study of the time sequence by which social support, and therefore its perception, is accumulated. Unless people are delusional, social support and its appraisal are created primarily as a product of real events in their lives. Most research comparing “perceived” and “received” social support actually compares perceptions of reality that have accumulated over long spans of time to a micro exchange of received support. Further, I illustrate that when social support does not behave as people expected (i.e., there are misperceptions) then people's belief systems about their support change, but, again, based on the facts. In this way, people are depicted as active operators in the support process, such that they make ongoing adjustments in their beliefs and in their actual social support by creating new relationships and how they interact in these relationships so that perceptions and reality match.

We examined the coping strategies of 1339, mostly African American (n = 666) and European American (n = 626), single, inner-city women in a cross-sectional study. We expected, and found through cluster analysis, four coping strategies: active-prosocial, active-asocial, passive-prosocial, and passive-asocial. It was hypothesized that women who were both active and prosocial in their general coping strategy would also report the most favorable coping correlates in terms of a broad array of variables, including the stressors they experienced, their personal and social resources, their psychological distress, and their safer-sex behavior. Women who were passive and asocial were predicted to have the poorest outcomes on these same variables. Women who were either active and asocial or passive and prosocial were hypothesized to have intermediary outcomes compared with the first two groups. The findings supported the hypotheses. The results suggest that when active and prosocial coping are linked, they lead to a broad array of positive psychological and behavioral outcomes, and that active coping alone is no more advantageous than prosocial coping alone.

We explored the influence of anger and depressive mood on the receipt of perceived workplace social support and perceived workplace resources among 121 postal workers over a period of 3 months. We theorized that emotional distress would result in perceptions of decreased social support and workplace resources for women, but not men. The hypothesis was partially supported. Interaction effects revealed that, whereas women perceived losing support and resources when experiencing depression and anger, respectively, these emotions had only limited negative consequences for men. The findings suggest that emotions are more closely linked with perceptions of social support and workplace resources for women than for men.

The amount of tedium, job stress, and home and work social support, were compared for men and women employed by four northeast Ohio employers. The differential effects of each source of support (i.e. supervisor, co-worker and partner) on tedium and job stress were also assessed. A sample of 116 individuals (61 males and 55 females), participated. Women and men reported similar amounts of job stress and similar amounts of work support. As predicted, women reported the experience of more tedium than men, and men reported the receipt of more household assistance than women. Also as predicted, workplace support was found to be more effective for men than for women. The data revealed that for men, household assistance was related to lower tedium, but for women, household assistance was related to greater tedium. The differential influence of home and work support for men and women was discussed.

A motivational model of social support was developed, based on a general stress model termed Conservation of Resources Theory (COR). COR suggests that individuals have, as a primary goal to preserve and protect those resources that they value. This resource conservation is made possible, in turn, by possessing a strong resource pool such that resource strength preserves further resource development and resource security. Resources, in other words, are both valued directly and valued indirectly as they serve to protect other resources. Social support provides a major reservoir for resources outside those endowed to the self (e.g. high self-esteem, sense of mastery). Examining our model and those proposed recently by others, we suggest that social support may be a central building block of health and well-being because together with personal resources t is related to overall sense of identity. Corollaries of this theory were also developed and supporting research was presented. Implications of our social support resource theory for social support intervention were considered.